Category: Nevada

An Example "Fact Bucket" Video for my Forbidden Archaeology Students

11/12/2018

This year in Forbidden Archaeology, the students are making videos as group projects. They are currently working on finishing up their scripts, and we'll start taping segments next week. There is a range of a topics, but all have something to do with "fringe" claims about the human past. Barring any total breakdowns, there will be seven student videos in all. Hopefully I'll be able to start posting them in December.

As I was planning out what to this semester, I decided that making videos would be a way for the students to work on several different elements of critical thinking and communication. It would also give us an opportunity (I hope) to engage with a different audience than the 2016 class did with their blog posts. It's an experiment, so I won't really know what the broader impacts are until the videos are done and we see what the reaction is.

I made an example video so the students could get a better idea of what I was thinking of in terms of length, graphics, etc. I chose to talk about the "red-haired cannibal giants" of Nevada, and I threw this video together in a few hours on Friday afternoon. Enjoy!

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Joe Taylor Repeats "Red-Headed Giant" Lie, Describes Defacing Lovelock Cave

9/10/2016

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My Forbidden Archaeology students will be watching this 2015 video of Joe Taylor over the weekend so we can discuss it in class on Monday as part of the section on giants. I chose the video because Taylor, a Young Earth Creationist, is an active advocate of the idea that demonstrating the existence of giants would prove the Bible to be true and the theory of evolution to be false.

In the preamble to his presentation of his evidence for giants, Taylor provides an "update" on the ongoing activities of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum. Those activities apparently included a trip to investigate Lovelock Cave (Nevada) firsthand (beginning around 7:00 in the video). Lovelock Cave is one of those sites that holds pull for just about every element of the "fringe:" giantologists, alien enthusiasts, Bigfoot believers, etc. I've written a little about the human remains from the Lovelock Cave area before (here and here).

Taylor's brief discussion of Lovelock irked me for two reasons. First, he uncritically repeats the mistaken notion that there are Paiute legends of "red-headed giants" inhabiting the cave. Second, he describes activities during his "investigation" that probably violate laws protecting archaeological sites on federal land.

Sarah Winnemucca's "Red-Headed Giants"

Talking about his visit with some Native Americans to discuss the cave, Taylor says the following:

"This gal here is a descendant of Chief Winnemucca, and Sarah Winnemucca was her great great aunt, I guess. This is Sarah Winnemucca, who wrote a lot about the red-headed giants -- wrote the whole story."

No, she didn't: the often-repeated claim that Sarah Winnemucca wrote about cannibalistic, red-haired giants is false.

The source of the "red-headed giant" claim is the 1883 book by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins titled Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims. The people paraphrasing this book should take the time to actually read it: nowhere does Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins discuss "red-headed giants." The part relevant to Lovelock is the last paragraph of Chapter IV. I'll reproduce that whole paragraph for our convenience:

"Among the traditions of our people is one of a small tribe of barbarians who used to live along the Humboldt River. It was many hundred years ago. They used to waylay my people and kill and eat them. They would dig large holes in our trails at night, and if any of our people travelled at night, which they did, for they were afraid of these barbarous people, they would oftentimes fall into these holes. That tribe would even eat their own dead – yes, they would even come and dig up our dead after they were buried, and would carry them off and eat them. Now and then they would come and make war on my people. They would fight, and as fast as they killed one another on either side, the women would carry off those who were killed. My people say they were very brave. When they were fighting they would jump up in the air after the arrows that went over their heads, and shoot the same arrows back again. My people took some of them into their families, but they could not make them like themselves. So at last they made war on them. This war lasted a long time. Their number was about twenty-six hundred (2600). The war lasted some three years. My people killed them in great numbers, and what few were left went into the thick bush. My people set the bush on fire. This was right above Humboldt Lake. Then they went to work and made tuly or bulrush boats, and went into Humboldt Lake. They could not live there very long without fire. They were nearly starving. My people were watching them all round the lake, and would kill them as fast as they would come on land. At last one night they all landed on the east side of the lake, and went into a cave near the mountains. It was a most horrible place, for my people watched at the mouth of the cave, and would kill them as they came out to get water. My people would ask them if they would be like us, and not eat people like coyotes or beasts. They talked the same language, but they would not give up. At last my people were tired, and they went to work and gathered wood, and began to fill up the mouth of the cave. Then the poor fools began to pull the wood inside till the cave was full. At last my people set it on fire; at the same time they cried out to them, "Will you give up and be like men, and not eat people like beasts? Say quick – we will put out the fire." No answer came from them. My people said they thought the cave must be very deep or far into the mountain. They had never seen the cave nor known it was there until then. They called out to them as loud as they could, "Will you give up? Say so, or you will all die." But no answer came. Then they all left the place. In ten days some went back to see if the fire had gone out. They went back to my third or fifth great-grandfather and told him they must all be dead, there was such a horrible smell. This tribe was called people-eaters, and after my people had killed them all, the people round us called us Say-do-carah. It means conqueror; it also means "enemy." I do not know how we came by the name of Piutes. It is not an Indian word. I think it is misinterpreted. Sometimes we are called Pine-nut eaters, for we are the only tribe that lives in the country where Pine-nuts grow. My people say that the tribe we exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair, which has been handed down from father to son. I have a dress which has been in our family a great many years, trimmed with this reddish hair. I am going to wear it some time when I lecture. It is called the mourning dress, and no one has such a dress but my family."

Cannibals? Yes.

Red hair? Yes.

Giants? No.

In fact, the word "giant" is only used once in the entire document, when the author tells us that tales about giants are "make-believe stories:"

The inconvenient fact that Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins never discussed red-haired giants in Lovelock Cave has not stopped numerous "researchers" from proclaiming that she did. Taylor apparently made a field trip to Lovelock to search for evidence of these imagined "giants" for himself, which brings me to the second (and more troubling) part of Taylor's discussion.

The Defacement of Lovelock Cave

Joe Taylor apparently took it upon himself to deface the site during his visit.

Here's what Taylor says:

"Inside the cave -- this is inside the walls of the cave -- and the whole ceiling has been blackened. I took a little scraping of that stuff to have it analyzed. We also . . . it looked like there's a big hand print on the wall. They were thinking it was an impression, and I said well I think it's just a . . . it's like someone put their hand in paint and smacked the wall. The hand print was a whole 12-14 inches long, you know, five fingers. So I molded that thing, on the wall, which is dang near impossible to do. And about twenty of these BLM guys started coming up and we go "we're cooked." So they came in, looked around, and we just chatted with them a while and they went in the cave and came back out and "how do you do" and went on."

Screenshot from Taylor's presentation showing the black deposits on the ceiling that were scraped to obtain a sample.

Taylor scraped deposits off the ceiling and he used some kind of molding material on what was apparently rock art. Those are not things a person is allowed to do without a permit on a publicly-owned, federally-protected archaeological site. Here are some relevant sections of 43CFR7, which covers the protection of archaeological resources on federal land:

Section 7.4 "(a) . . . no person may excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface, or attempt to excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface any archaeological resource located on public lands or Indian lands unless such activity is pursuant to a permit issued under Sec. 7.8 or exempted by Sec. 7.5(b) of this part."

Section 7.5 "(a) Any person proposing to excavate and/or remove archaeological resources from public lands or Indian lands, and to carry out activities associated with such excavation and/or removal, shall apply to the Federal land manager for a permit for the proposed work, and shall not begin the proposed work until a permit has been issued."

I'm not a lawyer, but I think what Taylor claims he did probably violates 43CFR7. Taylor's comment about his worries when officials from the Bureau of Land Management approached suggests that he knew, or was at least concerned, that what he was doing was illegal. Both of Taylor's activities (the scraping and the molding) permanently altered the cave, which is an important and well-known archaeological site (if you want to learn more about the actual archaeology of the site, the Wikipedia entry is a good place to start). And for what purpose? To chase imaginary giants he supposes were discussed in a book that he apparently has not even bothered to read closely.

What a dumb thing to do.

Here is a webpage by someone named Ron Morehead who was apparently on this trip with Taylor. He wonders what happened to the "giant hand print" after they attempted to make a mold of it -- apparently it's no longer visible.

Imagine if every person with some kind of unsupported theory about the past took it upon himself to scrape archaeologicaldeposits from ceilings to satisfy their own unfocused curiosity, or to throw chemicals on rock art (apparently just to show it was only rock art and not an impression?). What if every bozo with a ridiculous idea about the "Mound Builders" grabbed a shovel and went out to investigate on his own?

Archaeological resources are irreplaceable. Do you think Joe Taylor's vigilante "investigation" of Lovelock Cave helps us learn more about it? There's obviously a cost to the permanent alteration that happens when people move things, or scrape the ceiling, or put chemicals on the wall, but what's the benefit? Archaeological sites like Lovelock Cave belong to everyone -- they are a public resource. Your privilege to "investigate" imaginary giants ends when you start having a real physical impact on things that don't belong to you.

This kind of crap isn't harmless.

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Bigfoot Researchers Still Insist Native American Skull is Not Human

5/10/2015

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An alert reader of this blog emailed me on Friday to point to a discussion of my posts on the Humboldt and Lovelock skulls (both from Nevada) on the Bigfoot Evidence forum. Those posts were about the "double rows of teeth" alleged to be on the Humboldt skull (an error the author has now corrected) and the size of the mandible from one of the Lovelock skulls. I'm not really into Bigfoot, but I found the misinterpretations of the Nevada skulls interesting because of what seems like a pretty high level of "fringe" chatter revolving around what look to me to be normal human skulls of normal size and with normal features. Both claims (double rows of teeth and "giant-size") are nonsense.

Diehard fans of interpreting the Nevada skulls as Bigfoot crania apparently didn't like my analysis, and one accused me of "not being intellectually honest" because I focused on the misinterpretation of the teeth and avoided "everything else regarding the Humbolt [sic] skull's morphology and ratios, which is what I would have expected an honest, impartial anthropologist to do." In that same exchange, Daniel Dover said "Andy White calls himself a scientist but I'm not impressed with the way he goes off on stuff, making bad assumptions/rants." So there you have it . . . making new friends every day through science! I'm sure neither of these Bigfoot enthusiasts would have had any complaints if I had written a piece declaring that Bigfoot was real.

An aside: I'm not sure why writing a blog post about only one aspect of a skull makes me "intellectually dishonest." By pointing out that the Humboldt skull doesn't have double rows of teeth (which it doesn't) and the Lovelock mandible is not giant-sized (which it's not), did I somehow commit to analyzing every other aspect of those skulls in the same posts? No, I didn't. I mentioned in the Humboldt post that I planned on writing more about the Nevada skulls in the future (and a few days later, voila, I did!). And here I am writing more, which was my original plan. For those of you who want to call me "intellectually dishonest" on some Bigfoot forum that I might never see: if you want to do that (or, perhaps, ask a question or make a point or do something that's actually potentially productive), why not do it on my blog where I'll actually see it? You can even use your same anonymous screen name so your identity will remain a mystery and you can keep your day job without being made fun of for believing in Bigfoot. Try having an honest discussion about evidence. You might like it.

Anyway, let's move on. In this post I'm going to address some of Dover's other claims and interpretations about the Humboldt skull. Dover says that the Humboldt skull has a "browridge, sloping forehead, high vault of the cranium, and protruding jawline . . . all typical sasquatch traits." Here is the image of the skull that he shows, with a "modern human skull" for comparison:

Screenshot from Daniel Dover's webpage about the Humboldt skull: http://sasquatchresearchers.org/blogs/bigfootjunction/2014/11/19/sasquatch-skull-found-near-lovelock-nv/

Outlines of the Humboldt skull (blue) and the "modern human" skull (red) that Dover uses for comparison, aligned on the Frankfort horizontal and roughly scaled the same.

I have added lines representing the Frankfort plane to Dover's image. The Frankfort plane is a reference line that is used to consistently orient skulls for comparison. It is a line that passes through the lower margin of the eye orbit and the upper margin of the external auditory meatus (the ear hole) at a point designated porion. Superimposing this line on both the profile skull images lets us orient them the same so we can really compare. I traced an outline around each skull, roughly scaled them the same (lining up the orbits and porion), and superimposed the drawings on each other so they were both in the Frankfort horizontal (figure to the right).

The superimposed outlines show several of the characteristics that Erik Reed noted in his 1967 paper ("An Unusual Human Skull From Near Lovelock Nevada" - I found a copy of it here on M.K. Davis' website): a supraorbital torus (brow ridge), a sloping forehead, and a well-developed nuchal crest. The jaw of the Humboldt skull also appears to project more than the "modern human" skull, as Dover notes.

Outlines of the Humboldt skull (blue) and the skull drawing from Gray's Anatomy (green), aligned on the Frankfort horizontal and roughly scaled the same.

Let's talk about the jaw first. The "modern human" skull that Dover picked for comparison appears to have something atypical going on with the front teeth and mandible. I don't know what the ultimate source of the image was, but I found a higher resolution version here. The individual (who I would bet was a female based on the shape of the forehead and the small mastoid processes - physical anthropologists out there can feel free to offer an opinion), had a pretty strong overbite, and I wonder if that doesn't contribute to the difference in the profiles of the jaws. To check that, I drew the outline of the drawing of a "normal" human skull as depicted in Gray's Anatomy (illustration here). When that outline (in green) is superimposed on the Humboldt skull outline, the "jutting jaw" pretty much disappears. In other words, the jaw of the Humboldt skull does not protrude greatly compared to a normal human skull.

The brow ridge, sloping forehead, and nuchal crest remain, however. Does that mean this is the skull of a Bigfoot and not a Native American? No. That becomes clear if you try to understand what those features actually mean.

There is a lot of variation in human skulls, and there are several overlapping sources of that variation. Some variation can be attributed to sex (male and female skulls have patterned differences). Some variation is geographical (humans in different parts of the world can look different). Some variation is functional (skulls, like other parts of the skeleton, may reflect adaptions for different environments, different degrees of musculature, etc.). Sorting out how much variation there is, what causes that variation, and what that variation might mean (in terms of human evolution, gene flow between populations, movements of populations, patterns of physical activity, etc.) are things that physical anthropologists, paleoanthropologists, and archaeologists wrestle with all the time.

I guarantee you the simplest explanation for the morphology of the Humboldt skull is not that it's not human. The skull is very much human, and the combination of features (brow ridge, sloping forehead, and occipital area with pronounced attachments for the rear neck muscles) that Dover asserts are "unlike what you will ever find on any normal human skull" can be observed on other prehistoric human skulls and in living humans. That doesn't mean the skull is "average" - it is described as a large, strongly constructed skull that falls at the robust end of the modern human spectrum. But it is thoroughly human. Erik Reed (1967) says the following in his description:

"The skull obviously falls--among New World material--in the general category of the archaic type which is most often referred to by Georg Newmann's term 'Otamid variety.' More specifically, it resembles Early period central California material from the lower Sacramento Valley (Newman, 1957) and from Tranquility in the San Joaquin Valley (Angel 1966). Metrical correspondence to the Tranquility crania, as shown in Table 1, is remarkably close. Strong brow ridges, glabellar prominence, and well-developed occipital torus appear in some of the California material.
Finally, the Humboldt Sink skull closely resembles the Ophir calvarium from Virginia City, Nevada (Reichlen and Heizer, 1966)--even sharing the special peculiarity of a genuine os inca."

The Humboldt skull was presumably that of a large male. The brow ridge and sloping forehead are associated mechanically, as the brow ridge serves to reinforce the face against forces generated during mastication when the forehead slopes away rather than being vertical (that's the explanation of the brow ridge that makes the most sense to me, anyway). The biomechanical model of the brow ridge explains why it is so prominent in chimpanzees, gorillas, and many early hominids, and less prominent (to the point of being absent) in many modern humans. The strain placed on the portion of the skull above the eyes increases when the face is more prognathic (i.e., the jaws protrude more), the frontal bone is less vertical, and there is more emphasis on using the front teeth. The brow ridge - the shelf of bone above the eyes - serves to reinforce the face at the point where strain is greatest. Mary Russell wrote extensively about the biomechanics of the brow ridge in primates: here is a paper of hers from 1982; here is a paper of hers in Current Anthropology from 1985 (but most of it is behind a paywall); here is a 1985 commentary on Russell's work by Milford Wolpoff. The take-away point is that the brow ridge likely has a functional (and perhaps even developmental) origin: it's not some random feature that can be used to discern "human" from "nonhuman" skulls. It's easy to find examples of modern humans with brow ridges, especially associated with large, strong males (which the Humbolt skull presumably was). How about Lex Wotton? Nikolai Valuev? Cain Velasquez? Note the brow ridges and sloping foreheads. Last time I checked, none of these guys was a Bigfoot.

There are also biomechanical explanations for the back of the skull. Dover correctly states that the nuchal plane is where the neck muscles attach to the rear of the skull. There is a general relationship between the robusticity of the nuchal crest and the strength of the rear neck muscles - gorillas and chimpanzees have strongly developed nuchal crests because their neck muscles have to hold their heads up while they are moving about as quadrupeds. That doesn't mean that humans can't have big attachments for the nuchal muscles, however, associated with strong muscles at the back of the neck. I wasn't able to find a comprehensive, cross-primate study of the mechanics of the nuchal line/crest while I was writing this post, but that doesn't mean such a study doesn't exist. I would bet there are other examples of human skulls with nuchal crests like those of the Humboldt skull (here is a paper that has a photograph of a Late Pleistocene human from Romania with a moderately well-developed nuchal crest; here is Angel's 1966 paper on the skeletons from Tranquility, CA, that is mentioned by Reed). Dover's statement that "Human skulls have no such markedly protruding nuchal crest" like that of the Humboldt skull is an assertion that I would guess won't stand up to scrutiny. There's no doubt the Humboldt skull has a big nuchal crest, but that doesn't mean there's nothing else like it in the world and that the skull is therefore not human.

Finally, for your enjoyment, I give you two versions of the outline of the Humboldt skull superimposed upon the profile of former UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar (source of profile photo). In the top illustration, I have oriented and scaled the outline of the Humboldt skull by placing the two landmarks used to find the Frankfort plane (the external auditory meatus and the lower margin of the orbit) in their approximate locations on Lesnar's head. In this configuration, the vault of the Humboldt skull is slightly higher than Lesnar's, but the face actually projects less than Lesnar's.

In the bottom illustration, I have placed the Humboldt outline so that it corresponds pretty closely to Lesnar's profile. This puts the orbit a little too far forward and the external auditory meatus a little low, but you get the idea: the shape of the Humboldt skull, presumably that of a large, powerful male, is not inconsistent with the shape of the skull of another large, powerful male. I have no idea what Brock Lesnar's occipital area looks like, but it wouldn't surprise me if his skull had a nuchal crest just as pronounced as that of the Humboldt skull. If you think this makes Lesnar a Bigfoot, I'll let you be the one to tell him that.

The Humboldt skull is the the skull of a human, not a Bigfoot. All the features found on the skull are found in humans. The impression that the jaw of the Humboldt skull juts out significantly farther than a jaws of "modern humans" is incorrect, as shown by the comparison (in proper orientation) with an average human skull. The remaining combination of features that Bigfoot enthusiasts seem to be homing in on as "nonhuman" - the brow ridge, the sloping forehead, and the well-developed nuchal area - are characteristics that are most often expressed in humans that are large, powerful males. I would guess that's what the Humboldt skull is - the remains of a large, powerful male.

A Native American male, not a Bigfoot male.

References:

Reed, Erik K.. 1967. An Unusual Human Skull from Near Lovelock, Nevada. Miscellaneous Paper 10, University of Utah Department of Anthropology, Anthropological Papers. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

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Lovelock Cave and the Illusion of "A Jawbone That Slips Over That of a Large Man"

5/8/2015

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The human skeletal remains from Lovelock Cave, Nevada, are like the pretty girl that all the fringe theorists want to take to the prom. Giant enthusiasts, ancient alien theorists, and Bigfoot researchers all covet them. As you might guess if you've been paying attention, there is no empirical support for the idea that the human remains and the archaeological deposits from Lovelock Cave are related to anything other than Native American inhabitants of the region. And as you also might guess, that doesn't stop fringe theorists from making the same inaccurate statements about Lovelock Cave over and over again.

I won't recount the history of investigations in Lovelock Cave here (you can read a basic outline on Wikipedia). If you Google "Lovelock Cave" you'll get a mixture of results, some focusing on the actual archaeology of the cave and many talking about the Si-Te-Cah legend and the "red-haired giants." Apparently the "Paiute legend" of cannibalistic, red-haired giants originated with a story by a Paiute woman named Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins in her 1883 book Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (see this 2013 post by Brian Dunning). The part relevant to Lovelock is the last paragraph of Chapter IV. If you read it you'll notice there's no mention of giants: the often-repeated statement that Paiute legends include giants in Lovelock cave seems to be a later addition. I guess it makes it easier to find giants if you just make them up. I haven't spent a lot of time checking into the various legends that are cited as evidence for the worldwide occurrence of giants, but I won't be surprised if a lot of them evaporate when you start to look closely. So far, the giantologists are 0-2 in my book (Lovelock Cave and Steve Quayle's Celtic giants).

So the legend part of the giant story from Lovelock Cave is baloney, but what about the physical remains? For this we have, first, David Hatcher Childress, ancient alien theorist and originator of the Smithsonian conspiracy theory, to help us. In this clip from Ancient Aliens, Childress visits the Humboldt Museum in Winnemuca, Nevada, to examine the Lovelock skulls and proclaim them to be those of giants:

"Inside this cabinet here are three skulls from the Lovelock Caves. When you first see these skulls, they pretty much seem to be normal looking skulls. However, it's when we really start to compare the jawbones with this modern dental impression of a normal adult male that we see that these jawbones are unusually large. And these are really the skulls of giant people. Who were perhaps seven, even eight feet tall. One of the odd things with these skulls is that they're not actually put on display here at the museum and they're kept hidden in this cabinet. Now we don't know if that's really just out of respect for Native Americans or whether there's really something unusual about these giant skulls that they don't want them displayed."

The silliness of the comparison between the "modern dental impression" (which includes only the teeth and a small portion of the gum line) and the Lovelock mandible should be evident to anyone who is breathing. It has been pointed out before. The total size of the cast is smaller because it doesn't include all the bone of the mandible. In what we are shown, the comparable parts of the cast the and the mandible (the teeth and the tooth row) do not really appear to be that different in size. Ancient Aliens only shows us the "normal" plaster cast sitting in front of the Lovelock mandible, however, and doesn't actually give us a view that allows a direct comparison.

Fortunately for us, Childress isn't the only one who has made the plaster cast comparison. There are at least two other pictures floating around on the internet that purport to show a mandible from Lovelock compared to the teeth of a "normal-sized" human (not surprisingly, most of the sites reproducing these photos conclude that the Lovelock mandible is "giant"). The top photo in my illustration is usually attributed to someone named Stan Nielsen and accompanied by his description titled "The Cave of the Red Haired Giants." Nielsen is/was apparently a treasure hunter. The text of his description (e.g., here, here, and here) concludes that "The plaster model was much smaller than the jaw from the skull. In fact, the teeth of the jaw from the skull were almost twice the size of those of my plaster model." I do not know the origin of the bottom photo. The similarities in lighting and background make me suspect that it was taken at the same time as the top photo. [Update: In the comments section Gary pointed out to me that these are actually the same photo. The one on the bottom has just been edited by blacking out the interior of the cast, presumably to make it appear smaller? Anyway . . . there you go. Thanks Gary.]

Both the photos are arranged in the same way, with the plaster cast "inside" the Lovelock mandible, creating the illusion that the mandible is much larger than the plaster cast. Superimposing an outline of the tooth row of the plaster casts onto the mandible shows that, while the teeth and tooth row of the mandible are a little larger, it is not "giant" in comparison to the casts (Terje Dahl points out the same thing on his site, but concludes that that must mean the "real" giant skeletons have been replaced with normal-sized ones).

The illusion of a dramatic size difference is created by the parabolic shape of the human mandible: parabolic objects of similar size can be nested inside one another. Nineteenth and early twentieth century newspaper accounts of "giants" often describe the mandible of the skeleton as being so massive that "it will slip over the jaw of a large man." The uselessness of this comparison was noted by Gerard Fowke in his Archaeological History of Ohio (1902:142-143):

"It is a very common newspaper statement that a Mound Builder has been dug up somewhere 'whose jawbone will slip over that of a large man.' Sometimes the man elevates the marvelous into the miraculous by having a growth of 'remarkably heavy whiskers.'
It is not necessary to procure a Mound Builder in order to perform this feat; the phenomenon is equally apparent with any other full grown human jaw. It may be observed, also, in curved or open-angle objects generally, having approximately the same form and thickness; as spoons, saucers, miter-joints, gutter-spouts, or slices of melon rinds. The significance is a great in one case as in the others. The experimenter has failed to perceive a considerable interval between the end, or angle, of the jaw which he held in his hand and the one with which it was being compared. He should invert the former and apply it to the lower part of the latter, when he would find much less difference than he expected."

Gerard Fowke worked for The Smithsonian, so I'm sure some of you out there will take his basic understanding and explanation of geometry to be part of a vast conspiracy to suppress information about giants. If you're skeptical, I suggest you get some slices of melon rind and try it yourself. Paper cups will also work if you don't have melon rinds or human mandibles sitting around.

The mandibles and skulls of Lovelock Cave are not those of giants, and the "legend" of giants attributed to the Paiute appears do not actually contain any mention of giants. The Humboldt skull does not have double rows of teeth (and neither do any of the Lovelock skulls, if you noticed).

Why does this mythology about Lovelock have such staying power? This is one of the relatively few cases where the skeletal remains of supposed giants have been available to look at. Even when it is perfectly obvious that these are normal human remains, wishful thinkers proclaim them to be the remains of giants. David Hatcher Childress, actually holding the normal-sized skull in his hands, says "these are really the skulls of giant people." I just don't get it. At least when people found mastodon bones in the 1700s they were looking at something that was unexplainable given their knowledge of the natural world. But this isn't that. This is the willful maintenance of a fringe myth that can be easily discarded based on what is sitting right there in front of you. The desire for the "smoking gun" is so strong that not even the most obvious evidence to the contrary can dampen it - when you've made yourself immune to the evidence, you've inoculated yourself to the "truth" you claim to be uncovering. So silly.

If you're mad at yourself for some reason, you can watch this video of M. K. Davis spinning tales about why so many of the skulls from Lovelock Cave appear to be missing. He says that an earlier photo of the cabinet that David Hatcher Childress looked in shows that there used to be more skulls. As pointed out by one of the comments to the video, what Davis is actually looking at is an image that is two photos of the same skulls (in a different arrangement) spliced together. Note that the "shelf" disappears into nothingness on the right side, and the skull on the far right on the top is the same as the second skull from the right on the bottom (you can tell by the missing teeth in the upper and lower jaws). Davis' website makes the same mistake.

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ATTENTION GIANT ENTHUSIASTS: Bigfoot Researchers Are Stealing Your "Evidence"

4/27/2015

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I got very little reaction to my recent post that used quantitative data to explore the meanings of the idiomatic phrase "double rows of teeth" as applied to all kinds of things completely unrelated to giants. That hurts my feelings: it took me many hours to assemble those data (and at least $15.90 worth of Newspaper.com subscription fees), and I would have thought that at least one giant enthusiast would have tried to tell me I was wrong. Maybe that means they think I'm right? Or maybe it is just because they're not listening.

Anyway, the one thing I have discovered from the very limited response to that post is that at least some Bigfoot researchers also have a fetish for "double rows of teeth." I learned this when one person, in response to a posting of the latest "double rows of teeth" post on Facebook, posted a picture of the base of a skull from the Humboldt Sink Flats, Nevada, that purportedly showed evidence of double rows of teeth. The Humboldt Sink Flats are near Lovelock Cave, a site beloved by giant enthusiasts for several "unusual" human skulls that they say are evidence of giants (I'll write about Lovelock at some point when I have more time).

I reproduce below a photo of the Humboldt skull from this page about Bigfoot by Daniel Dover. The yellow arrows that Dover has added to the photo are supposed to show the sockets of a double row of teeth, while the blue arrow is supposed to show an actual "double tooth" still in place. As best I can tell, the original photo was taken from this 1967 publication by Erik Reed titled "An Unusual Human Skull from Near Lovelock, Nevada" (I don't yet have access to the original).

Photo of the base of the Humboldt skull allegedly showing evidence of a double row of teeth.

Here is what Dover says about the skull:

"If you thought the features couldn’t get any odder then you were wrong. The unusual features just keep rolling in. Pictured below is the underside of the Lovelock Skull displaying another unusual feature — it has double rows of teeth. Now, if that isn’t divergent from Homo sapiens then nothing is. This odd feature is demonstrated by holes in the roof of the mouth where double rows of missing teeth were once embedded. and a few double teeth still remain.

It should have been obvious even before looking inside a sasquatch’s mouth that this is not a human skull, yet experts in this field declare it is Homo sapien by default due to scientists being “unaware” of anything else to attach it to. The anthropologists who wrote the paper on this skull likened it to “. . . Eastern Asiatic subdivision of the general Upper Paleolithic Homo sapiens.” So, they likened it to a “subdivision” of Homo sapiens who once lived during the Upper Paleolithic, that era lasting from 50,000 to 10,000 years ago, even though this skull is not anywhere near that ancient."

The dental features that Dover is pointing out as indicative of "divergent from Homo sapiens" are, in fact, absolutely normal features of a normal human dentition. Human maxillary molars (the large grinding teeth in the back of the upper jaw) typically have three roots: two on the cheek (buccal) side of the tooth and one on the tongue (lingual) side of the tooth. Mandibular molars generally only have two roots. Each root is associated with a socket, so each maxillary molar has three sockets (called alveoli). A diagram of a normal human palate missing all the teeth (source) shows the same morphology as the Humboldt skull:

Dover also tries to make a connection between Bigfoot and the skeletons from Delavan, Wisconsin. Good luck with that. You'll have to fight off L. A. Marzulli and the Nephilim brigade for ownership of the misinformation about that site.

I'm not really into Bigfoot, but it's clear that Dover isn't the only Bigfoot researcher who has latched onto the idea that the skeletons with "double rows of teeth" reported from the late 19th and earth 20th centuries may be the physical remains of Bigfoot (here's another example). The inability of Bigfoot researchers to produce physical remains of their own has led them, like giant enthusiasts, to claim for their cause any skeleton or skull that seems to be unusual. In addition to now claiming some of the same physical evidence and same misinterpretations of historical sources, giant enthusiasts and Bigfoot researchers also rely on the same lack of anatomical knowledge to perpetuate the idea that something is being hidden from them.

Each maxillary molar has three roots. Do you think they each only have one root? So each hole in the bone is from a single tooth? Did you think about looking into that a little bit before announcing that you know more than all the experts who have ever studied human anatomy? Go ask your dentist. Google it. Read a book. Stop being silly.

I do wonder, however, if this mistake was also made in the past and may have also contributed to the identification of skulls with only tooth sockets (i.e., where all the teeth have fallen out) as having had teeth arranged in multiple rows. It is another data point (along with things like the "giant's teeth" from Sardinia and the 1845 mastodon man) that highlights the generally low level of knowledge about human skeletal anatomy in our population. Unfamiliarity with features of the human skeleton and the comparative anatomy of humans and animals (even among health professionals such as dentists and physicians) has led to numerous misidentifications and misinterpretations and continues to do so. Maybe all giant enthusiasts and Bigfoot researchers should take an anatomy course before they can become certified. Maybe that's how I'll make my fortune: I'll develop an online training program that teaches basic familiarity with mammalian functional and skeletal anatomy. It's really not that tough to tell a cow's tooth from a human tooth, or to count the roots on a molar - I'm pretty sure I can help just about anyone achieve basic proficiency in that sort of thing. Let me know if you're interested. I'll start a sign-up sheet. Seriously.

Update (5/3/2015): Daniel Dover let me know on Facebook that he edited his original post. Here is what he said:

"Hello Andy White. I corrected that portion of my article, which I meant to do a good while back after [Micah Ewers] pointed out what looks like double teeth is likely just roots of molars. I had forgotten about it but I rewrote that portion. However, I find it interesting that there are several reports of double rows of teeth in large skeletal finds. Not to say I care for the condescending approach toward me and bigfoot in general, but I appreciate the correction anyway."

As far as the "several reports of double rows of teeth," I refer the interested reader to the now extensive work I've done discussing the various permutations and meanings of the peculiar phrases "double rows of teeth" and "double teeth all around," which are uncritically interpreted by giant enthusiasts (and apparently also Bigfoot enthusiasts) as indicating something abnormal, inhuman, of even supernatural. That's not what those phrases were intending to indicate in the large majority of cases - read some of my work on it and see for yourself.

In response to my "condescending approach," I would say that when you make such a basic error in anatomy as interpreting normal tooth root sockets as evidence that a skull is nonhuman while also saying that you know more than all the "experts" in human anatomy . . . you're asking for the that kind of treatment. And to be made aware that you made such a basic error but just to let it sit out there for years (? I don't know the date of the original post - I think it might have been 2012 or 2013?) . . .That doesn't suggest to me a great deal of concern about getting the details right.

The link to Dover's new post is the same as the old one, so the original text I quoted in my blog post is no longer visible. Dover's section about the teeth now reads:

"Included in the odd features of this skull are what appears to some to be double rows of teeth, an idea championed by M.K. Davis and others. Pictured below is the underside of the Lovelock Skull displaying the supposed double rows of teeth; however, the holes seen in the photo below are normal dentition found in humans caused by the multiple roots on molars."

I'll get back to the Lovelock and Humboldt Sink skulls at some point in the future. There are so many misinterpretations and misrepresentations about these remains that it's hard to decide what to look at next.